


Timshel

by end_alls



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, post kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/end_alls/pseuds/end_alls
Summary: As Sora ventures down into Death alone, the last person left in his heart comes out to claim his vessel.Originally written for the Vanitas Appreciation Anthology zine!
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	Timshel

Vanitas is locked inside a chest lashed with a latch, down in dark so deep that nothing exists anymore. There is no rage or pain or despair, and he lays there until he knows only the obsidian walls that hold him between someone else’s ribs.

Some day, some time, the lock breaks. The walls buckle. They will crush him before long, and for a moment, he concedes to let them.

But the door is open. He can go out.

His hand is on the latch, and then he is unspooling. He unfurls like snakes from their pits, nosing and feeling their way through muscle, vein, and sinew.

He takes stock of the body. Gone is the strained rage, the heavy despair stitched and strung through every inch of him.

Gone is the pain.

The body is warm and lush and welcoming, and though it doesn’t fit right, he feels at home inside its skin.

The pain returns, small at first. His chest begins to seize, and he thinks his venomous heart must be poisoning his new body, but as his mouth opens to gulp down air like water in drought, he recalls his lungs and their function.

Then, voices—choking like him. Is something wrong with the air?

Finally, one manages, “Sora?” Then, a chorus joins it, until the name is ringing through his skull.

He finds where his eyelids are, and wrenches them open. His eyes are the only thing that feel the same—weak to the light—and they swivel wildly, searching for the person the voices are calling for. But they’ve already stopped.

Their stares hit him like an insect beneath magnified glass. And it’s _all_ of them—Terra and Aqua and Ventus and droves of people he doesn’t know.

There is no Sora.

One of them—Riku, the original—lances through the silence. “Who are you.” It’s spoken through gritted teeth and mourning lips.

If they don’t know who he is, then he will remind them. He will not be ignored or forgotten again.

“Vanitas,” he hisses, but his name comes out with its edges dulled. His throat feels wrong.

No one moves, and it’s his chance to run, regroup, but then Ventus parts from the crowd, shoulders out of Terra and Aqua's concerned reach. “…Vanitas?”

Ventus slowly lowers himself to the ground, and reaches for his hand. Vanitas flinches away, because it’s a trick, and his chest is on a sheer edge as he waits for the crackle through his bones that comes when Ventus is near him. When they're close enough to be one. Vanitas doesn’t want it anymore. It’s too much like pain, and last time, it didn’t fix him like it was supposed to.

But like the pain, it doesn't come either. Why is his body so different? They wouldn’t have given him a replica. He doesn’t deserve one.

Ventus exploits his hesitation, the momentary lapse in his defenses. Vanitas’ hand is grasped tightly, and then he’s being pulled up. As he’s steadied on his feet, it’s as if the ground has given out below him, and yet he won’t fall.

“Were you… inside Sora?” Riku’s level voice is dusted with disgust.

He tries to remember, and his eyes drift to where Ventus is still holding his hand, but it’s not his hand. The scars are smaller, and faded—not like his dark streaks that could never completely heal. His gloves are gone, replaced with someone else’s.

Sora’s.

“Vanitas…!” The horizon tilts, and Ventus’ hand tightens around his wrist, but he wrenches it free just before the rest of him hits the dirt.

“Don’t touch me!” he screams, scrambling backwards as his breath heaves in his chest. He realizes what’s wrong with his throat. Sora’s voice is coming out of it. “Stay away!”

He calls his keyblade, but instead of being met with its comforting heft, it falls like a rock, bringing his hand down with it. He tugs on it in the dirt, but the fingers that knew it are gone, and after a few more moments, it abandons him, sparking into nothingness.

He screams again, but it doesn’t matter. The others have come no closer, and even Ventus remains where he is. Their eyes press down, too heavy for him to raise himself from the ground that was meant to be a grave. They’re looking at him like they want something, but he can’t give it back.

He’s not listening to the words they’re saying, because they all mean the same thing. They don’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t either.

There’s yelling, and crying, but soon the sound of the wrong heartbeat rises to thud against the eardrums inside his skull until he can’t hear anything else.

The reality sinks into him slowly, like fallen blood on dirt.

Sora has abandoned them, and Sora has abandoned him. Ventured into to Death without even the shadow twined to his soul. The fool. The fool the fool the fool the

“Vanitas.” The name is sharp-edged and cuts through the mist in his mind, jolting him from where he is balled on the floor of their traversing ship. His face rises to see Riku, and Vanitas knows the sound of a voice crushing the feelings trying to claw their way out. “Are you… Do you know where he is? Where he—”

“I don’t _know_ where Sora is.” After they’ve been spit out, the words leave him barren inside. A shadow without a source.

Riku’s eyes glance off him like a keyblade’s blow on a barrier. “…I see.” Vanitas knows the sound a throat makes right before it breaks, and he doesn’t watch Riku go.

Without his realizing it, his attention drifts to Ventus, still arguing with Aqua and Terra. As if he can feel Vanitas’ eyes on him, Ventus pauses to return his gaze, but Aqua and Terra’s hands lower onto his shoulders like iron bars, their long-summoned keyblades glinting alongside piercing eyes.

He _should_ leave—abandon them to their labyrinthine mourning. He strains against Sora’s skin, testing its give—but there’s no way out.

And worse—his fingers brush along a soft jaw where the unforgiving lines of a helmet used to be—he doesn’t—he doesn’t want to.

His old vessel was ruined from the start, a well poisoned as soon as it could draw water, and the pain it held within its walls grows more distant with each breath through Sora’s lungs. This body is unconditional, ready to welcome even him.

Sora is the only home he has left.

He’s brought to a tower, placed in a room with a lock, eyed and questioned and examined. But he’s barely aware of it, choosing to let time flow over this beating heart as he counts seconds, minutes, hours without pain. He lets its absence soak into him until he is drunk on it.

Some time or other, a shadow crosses over him, and his yellow eyes open to see that Riku is back again.

“Vanitas.” The name is steadier on his lips. He's practiced it. “You’ve been in here long enough.”

“I can’t get out.” Riku must know that.

“Come on.” Riku pulls him off the bed he’s been laying on, and a snarl rips itself from nowhere as clawing fingers connect with Riku’s skin, but he doesn’t relent. “Vanitas. We’re _leaving.”_ Stinging shoots through his shoulders as Riku manages to grip them, and Vanitas feels himself fold at the first brush of discomfort. He’s never going to hurt again.

Riku’s hands leave him standing upright, but he won’t raise his head.

“Let’s go.” They may be strangers, but something in Riku’s voice tugs at the body he’s in. He goes.

He follows Riku to the transversal ship, lets Riku strap him into a seat.

He watches the stars brush by them like debris in a storm as Riku pilots the ship in silence. After a while, their destination appears before them—a world that calls to his heart and body alike.

The islands.

The lush, impossibly blue sea stretches across the ship’s windows as they draw nearer, like falling into Sora’s eyes.

The ship lands in the water near the small island, and Vanitas realizes why they’re here. Riku rises from his seat and approaches him, a hand outstretched.

He’s going to break him, leave the body here to expire, and this time, there will be no Sora to save it.

“No!” Vanitas tries to struggle, but he’s trapped, belts strapped across his chest. “No no no NO!” The keyblade comes to his call at last, heavy still, but light enough to swing. He does, wildly, and there’s a flash as it connects with hard metal.

“Wh—What’s wrong?!” Riku presses back with his own keyblade.

“You’re not taking me apart again!” he chokes just before his vision blurs. He pushes back, trying to shove Riku’s keyblade away, but his muscles are scrambled and strange, and tears come too easily. The full weight of the keyblade fills Vanitas’ grip again, and it clanks hard to the ground before vanishing. When he blinks the water from his eyes, Riku’s weapon is gone too, replaced with clenched fists.

“I didn’t bring you here to hurt you, Vanitas.” Riku says sharply. “I swear to you.”

Vanitas scoffs, but there’s a pleading in his chest that wants to believe it. He lowers his head and lets the tears blind him entirely.

This couldn’t have lasted. Couldn’t have worked.

But it had been… it had _been_. And _he_ had _been,_ without familiar burdens crushing down on his heart. Sora had given him that much, no matter now briefly.

When Riku reaches to undo the belts, he keeps still. Closes his eyes. He is ready.

There’s nothing. Then, footsteps receding across the metal floor. The opening of a hatch. Easier to open it before you have a body to carry.

“…Are you coming?”

Slowly, he forces his eyes open. Riku is silhouetted by the light streaming through the door, he holds out his hand.

Like a fool, Vanitas rises to take it.

Vanitas follows Riku slowly. Sora’s ridiculous shoes are difficult to move through the sand, and too big to ever fill.

Riku is patient. It must be his strongest virtue.

As they make their way down the shore, Riku’s head turns to the southwest, and Vanitas follows it to find the raised platform. The one with the paopu tree.

The strains of phantom aches drift through him at the sight of it. The feeling of being a broken thing, being choked by the tether that strung him to another broken thing lying here, worlds away.

But now, his feet sink into warm sand as the piece he’s missing plummets deeper, somewhere no one can follow.

The sun becomes too much, and Vanitas pulls his hand free from Riku’s to cover his eyes with his palms as they heat with tears.

Instead of going up to the platform, Riku guides him into the shade below the bridge, and they sit below the shade of the planks, with room enough for one more person between them.

They sit in silence, and Riku clenches and unclenches his fists until Vanitas can bear it no longer.

“When are you going to take him back from me?” Vanitas asks. If it wasn’t today, it would be tomorrow. Or next week, or months from now. Some day, some time, they wouldn’t be able to bear it any longer.

“That’s what you think?” Riku’s startled voice is convincingly sincere. Hurt, even. “That I’m just biding my time until I take you out of him?”

Vanitas doesn’t falter. “Yes.”

Riku brings his knees up to rest his elbows, hands running through his cropped hair. “…I thought I wanted Sora back at any cost.” His hands become clenched fists once more. “But not this one.”

“Is the price so steep?” Vanitas bites back. “I’m _nothing_ compared to him, and you know it.” Sora, the one everyone wanted. Sora, with his sunshine face. They’d known right away that someone else was beneath his skin, because Vanitas could spend years practicing and never capture the ease of Sora's smile.

“Sora knew your worth,” Riku says quietly. “He chose you.”

Now _that_ was impossible. Sora didn’t even know how long Vanitas had been inside him, festering like a cancer.

But Riku won’t let up. “You don’t have to believe me. But I think Sora knew someone would watch over him while he was gone.” Riku’s eyes turn to meet the yellow ones set into Sora’s face. “He… trusted you, so I will too.”

He has to make sure he heard Riku right. “Sora… trusted _me?”_

“I brought you here to tell you that.” Riku holds his eyes without looking away, even though it’s hard for him. “Because, maybe, if we’re here, he’ll hear it too.” His hand moves like he wants to touch him, lay a hand on Sora’s shoulder, but he doesn’t close the distance.

Vanitas doesn’t want to believe him. But it’s just like Sora to do something as stupid as to entrust _him_ with his vessel. He turns away, looks at the splashes of sun being cast on his arms. Hears the hushing hisses of the waves, feels the salty wind on his skin. His heart twists inside Sora’s chest.

“What if he wanted to give you a second chance?”

The words press immediate tears into his eyes. A second chance. Like Ventus got to have. Sora had given him his face. He couldn’t give him this.

“When he comes back, he’ll know what to do. He’ll know what to do with you, too.”

 _When._ There is a promise held in Riku’s when, and Vanitas’ heart rises to match it.

 _Until._ _Until_ Sora comes back, no harm will come to his vessel. Because Vanitas will be there to guard it, proudly and viciously.

 _Until_ then, Vanitas will learn to _be,_ and _when_ that day finally comes, Sora will know what to do.

He always does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I wrote this piece at the end of last year and I'm excited to finally share it! Please check out the rest of the pieces if you're able.
> 
> The title comes from a theme in the book East of Eden—timshel means "thou mayest" as in "thou mayest triumph over sin". The idea is that everyone has within them the opportunity to be good, if they're given the chance.
> 
> I'm on twitter at [toppiegames!](https://twitter.com/toppiegames)


End file.
